Latin American Styles of Negotiation

Role expectations influence negotiation in Latin American contexts. Responsibility to others is generally considered more important than schedules and task accomplishment. Their negotiation approach relates to the polychronic orientation to time and patterns of high-context communication. Lederach reports that a common term for conflict in Central America is enredo, meaning "entangled" or "caught in a net."[19] He explains that enredo signifies the way conflict is part of an intimate net of relations in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America. Thus, negotiation is done within networks, relationships are emphasized, and open ruptures are avoided.

In Central America, people think about and respond to conflict holistically. Lederach contrasts his natural (American) inclination to "make a list, to break story down into parts such as issues and concerns" with his Central American experience, where people tended to respond to requests for naming issues to be negotiated with "yet another story. They preferred a storied, holistic approach to conflict and negotiation, rather than a linear, analytical one. When Central Americans needed help with negotiations, they tended to look to insider partials rather than outsider neutrals, preferring the trust and confidence of established relationships and cultural insight to other credentials or expertise. They referred to the concept of confianza to explain this preference. Confianza means " trustworthiness, " that "they know us" and "we know them" and they will "keep our confidences."

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